Luhrmann Begs Love To Use Cobain Material

Movie director BAZ LUHRMANN was forced to beg COURTNEY LOVE to let him use NIRVANA's cult song SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT in his new movie.

Love was convinced that the music of her dead husband KURT COBAIN wasn't appropriate for the period piece, MOULIN ROUGE - which also stars NICOLE KIDMAN and EWAN McGREGOR, and revolves around the 19th Parisian night club.

Luhrmann says, "I had to spend time with Courtney Love going through that in a very thorough way. You can imagine Teen Spirit is an ironic piece, a symbol for a generation and Courtney really protects it. "At first she was like, 'In a musical? I don't think so!' And then I sent her the footage with that lyric, 'Here we are now, entertain us,' and she recognised the song is being sung by guys in top hats and tails and it's this wild out of control vision of the 1890s.

"The juxtaposition made it special enough for her to give us permission to use it." (MB/VOG/CPT)